The Headscarf Revolutionaries: Lillian Bilocca and the Hull Triple-Trawler Disaster

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His work on Hull’s year as 2017 City of Culture was recently published in the Open Library of the Humanities.

The St Romanus sank with all hands on January 11 1968 and then on January 26 the Kingston Peridot suffered the same fate. LIL the Play documented the life of Lillian Billoca that gave visitors an insight into the iconic Hessle Road where Lillian lived. Blenkinsop later accompanied Hull’s three Labour MPs to Parliament to mark the 50th anniversary of the campaign. Their demands were for full crewing of ships, radio operators to be on board every ship, improved weather forecasts, better training for trainee crew, more safety equipment and a "mother ship" with medical facilities to accompany the fleet. There was a single survivor of the three sinkings, 28-year-old Harry Eddom, the mate of the Ross Cleveland, who made a daring escape from the vessel by raft along with two crewmates who ultimately perished.Lil was a guest on ITV’s Eamonn Andrews Chat Show, and, as Lavery puts it, she ‘had the kind of press coverage a pop star would envy. One key demand, and it seems incredible today that it wasn't a legal requirement, was to have a qualified radio operator on board each ship. They started with a petition which grew to over ten thousand signatures in just days and two meetings at the Victoria Hall on Hull's Hessle Road which was packed with hundreds of fishermens wives and families and members of the press. Painted in 2016 by Mike Ervine and Kev Largey, the mural commemorates the Triple Trawler Tragedy of 1968 and the remarkable social movement led by Lillian ‘Big Lil’ Bilocca that sprang up in its wake. Every Hull person old enough knows something of the story of the loss of three trawlers and the campaign of Lillian Bilocca.

I just lost interest in it half way through and made the mistake of picking up another book before finishing it.

And to this list we can add the uprising of the Headscarf Revolutionaries, which has now been brilliantly documented in a new book by Brian W.

Back then, it was not a legal requirement for radio operators aboard, but change was just one of their demands. The three Headscarf Revolutionists honoured will be Yvonne Blenkinsop, Mary Denness and Christine Jensen MBE for their part in improving the safety standards at sea in the 1960s, which has saved thousands of lives. The song cycle was performed as a multimedia show in Hull Minster for the first time on 8 November 2018, in collaboration with local musicians Sam Martyn and Mick McGarry, with Lavery narrating and presenting a slideshow of seldom-seen images.These four women took on trawler bosses and the establishment and won, making the world’s most dangerous profession — deep sea trawling — safer by far. Chrissie Smallbone became Chrissie Jensen MBE, the award given for a lifetime’s work in trawler safety, as the first woman in the British Fishermen’s Association. Lavery has a long association with Hull, and describes this book as being the result of a promise that he would "set the record straight" about Mrs Bilocca. Blenkinsop’s private legacy is four children, 10 grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren. How many people need to suffer from the ecological disaster before somebody like Lillian Bilocca stands up?

Ernie [Ernest] Bilocca saw the Ross Cleveland sink from the Kingston Andalusite on which he was a deckhand. Led by the charismatic Lillian Bilocca – known as Big Lil – the women embarked on a campaign of protest and direct action that, as John Prescott acknowledges in the book’s foreword, ‘achieved more in weeks than unions and politicians ever did. This was an incredibly hard job; the work required huge physical effort, long hours and often took place in appalling conditions. In the beginning of 1968 during the worst winter in living memory and in the space of two weeks, three trawlers from Hull were lost at sea. The day after the loss of the third trawler, with the help of John Prescott and the massive media coverage this disaster was getting (this knocked the Vietnam War off the front pages), they took their campaign to Westminster and met the minister for agriculture and fisheries and over night those four local women have become legends in Hull forever.The Kingston Peridot was subsequently lost – probably on the night of 26/27 January – in icy winds and was reported as probably lost with all 20 hands on 30 January. As a depiction of human courage and the triumph of willpower, the extraordinary story of the disaster’s one survivor holds its own with Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void or any survival epic. An interesting recounting of the fisherman's wives fight following the "Hull triple trawler tragedy" that follow the leading women of the movement, their quick and successful campaign and the downfall of their leaders due to media coverage. I had some great music, inspired by the book, to listen to while reading namely, Reg Meuross's song cycle, Joe Solo and the Unthanks.